


until this morning, and this snow

by schweet_heart



Series: Merlin Fic [90]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - World War I, Angst, Battle, Blood and Gore, Camaraderie, Character Study, Depression, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Loneliness, Loss, M/M, Mild Gore, Missing in Action, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Temporary Character Death, Trench Warfare, Unhappy Ending, Violence, War, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 10:23:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12792555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schweet_heart/pseuds/schweet_heart
Summary: WW1 AU. The corpse is pale and well-preserved, its filmy eyes staring unseeing up into the gunmetal sky from beneath a shock of unruly dark hair. For an instant, Arthur sees Merlin’s face.Sequel toguttering, choking, drowning.





	until this morning, and this snow

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Futility](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57283/futility-56d23aa2d4b57) by Wilfred Owen.
> 
>  **Content warning:** deals with harsh physical realities of war, including some body horror/mild gore and semi-graphic violence, brief mentions of suicidal thoughts.

 

Winter in the trenches is a different kind of hell. In summer, there are the lice, the rats, the rotting dead, but in the winter the cold kills quickly and without mercy, so that a man might fall asleep one night and quietly freeze to death before morning. Somewhere between November and January, Arthur picks up a cough that he can’t quite shake, and in early February he loses the tip of his little finger to frostbite, an injury that still surprises him sometimes when he catches sight of it, shortened and grotesque around the butt of his gun.

 

By March, he has ceased to feel the cold, and he thinks of it only when thinking of anything else becomes impossible. The ground is beginning to thaw, which means that soon they’ll be on the move again, and already they can hear the thunder of artillery on a clear night, the sound of violence growing closer. The first time one of the shells comes close enough to hit the trench, Arthur slips with a letter-opener and slices his hand open, the clear, sharp pain the first real thing he’s felt since the frosts set in.

 

“You need to take better care of yourself, sir,” Owaine tells Arthur, as he helps him clean and bandage the wound. “Place like this, you could die of gangrene after cutting yourself shaving. You won’t be winning any medals for bravery if you do yourself in out of sheer clumsiness.”

 

“Perhaps. But I have no doubt Merlin would appreciate the irony,” Arthur says drily. Owaine doesn’t comment for a long moment, and it’s not until Arthur sees his face that he realises what he’s said. “He was– a friend,” he says fumblingly, and tucks in the end of the bandage. By rights, he ought to tie it off, but his hand is suddenly weak and shaking, and all he can think about is how to get away. “Before your time.”

 

He stumbles out of the dug-out and into the trench, not caring if his haste makes him seem rude. The shock of memory is nothing next to the sin of forgetfulness. Less than four months ago, Merlin was the subject that was foremost on his mind: his weight, his laugh, his clumsiness, the ever-present problem of keeping him alive. Now that he’s gone, it’s as if Arthur has ceased to think of anything altogether, or at least of anything besides the next step, and the next, all the necessary minutiae of keeping them moving forward.

 

Now, however, it seems he cannot stop. He thinks of Merlin in the evening, the way he’d look with his cheerful face lit golden by the fire, shoulder pressed close against Arthur’s under the pretext of getting warm. He thinks about Merlin in the morning, too, how steady he was at even the most mundane tasks, the way he could make the world stand still with just a touch even when it was falling apart. Around him, his men take aim without hesitation, apparently oblivious to his sudden disintegration, the shouts and screams of dying men rising out of the earth like a furious monster waking from its sleep, surging into life in a rage of fire and blood. Arthur’s hands are trembling again, the way they used to when he knew Merlin was stumbling into danger, the way they haven’t since the day he disappeared.

 

He wonders distantly what he has to be afraid of now.

 

The trench around him shudders as an explosion clips the edge of the dugout, a gout of mud spraying upwards into the frigid air and spattering them with wet clods of soil. Arthur falls back, stunned into sudden motion, and when he turns there’s a body in the muck, gleaming like exposed bone in the black-burned earth.

 

The corpse is pale and well-preserved, its filmy eyes staring unseeing up into the gunmetal sky from beneath a shock of unruly dark hair. For an instant, Arthur sees Merlin’s face. The lips are blue-edged, slightly parted, the body untouched save for a bullet-hole through the forehead. It could be him. _Missing. Presumed dead._ He staggers back from the remains, dropping his rifle in shock, and Leon has to yank him down abruptly to prevent him from becoming sniper fodder. As it is, a bullet lands with a soft _pffut_ in the wall of the trench behind him, just missing his left ear.

 

Arthur sinks to a crouch in the slush, hands trembling as he brushes them over his face.

 

“Are you mad?” Leon hisses, one fist still white-knuckled around his captain’s sleeve. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

 

Arthur shakes his head. The corpse is too recent to be Merlin, who had disappeared before the first snows fell; this man has clear traces of frostbite on his extremities, and he’s wearing a winter jacket over his uniform. On closer inspection, the shape of his face is also different — rounder and more boyish, lacking Merlin’s distinctive cheekbones, his unmistakable ears. Regardless, the horror of it still has him by the throat, so that it’s a full minute before he can say, “Surprised me. That’s all.”

 

Leon sighs and lets go of his arm. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters. “Two years in the trenches, and you’re trying to kill me with a heart attack. Pendragon, you are something else.”

 

Arthur tries to smile, shaping his mouth over chattering teeth. “Got to keep you on your toes somehow,” he says. “Can’t have you getting soft in your old age.”

 

Leon only shakes his head. “I’m never going to reach old age, if it’s left up to you.”

 

Arthur thinks of Merlin again, wherever he is, of those soft lips and the blue eyes closed in a permanent sleep. “I hear it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he says, and pretends he doesn’t hear the curse that follows as he walks away.


End file.
